I should have listened to Pam. I should have swallowed my pride, ran to Bill's house and admitted that I was in some deep shit then begged for at least his hidey-hole until it all blew over. But I didn't. I ran back upstairs to my room and pulled on a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved Fangtasia T-shirt, socks, and the first of my new Chuck Taylors. When the frantic questions in my head cleared away for a fraction of a second, I realized that I was not alone in my home. I could hear muffled sounds from what had been Octavia's bedroom, under the floorboards. The hidey-hole! There were only two people aside from myself who knew about the hidey-hole, and neither of them would dare hurt me. I pulled my second shoe on and tied it with the speed of sound and neatness of a 2nd grader, and darted back downstairs and into Octavia's bedroom, into the closet and with more strength than necessary, pulled up the door to the vampire safe-haven. Instead of Eric or Bill, a smiling young woman lay under the floor boards, with dyed blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a net made of pure silver.
The next few hours were nothing short of the deepest circle of hell. From the silver net in which the woman had caught me, I screamed out loud to Eric, to Pam, to Sam, Bill and even Quinn, but there was nothing. I screamed to Barry silently, hoping that he was within range. We'd never truly tested how far away he could hear me, and we hadn't spoken since I'd been made vampire. Maybe he couldn't hear me anymore? Barry! Barry! Please listen! It's me, Sookie and I'm in a big heap of trouble! Barry! Help me! But nothing. I was being dragged by my hands, which had been tied behind my back in silver chains, and were I still a fragile human, I would have feared that my shoulders would have broken. But I could think of nothing other than the pain of the silver digging into my wrists, which compared to no pain I had ever known in life. How Eric and Bill had maintained their composure while touching silver, I'd never know, because I sure as hell couldn't. "Let me out of this! You don't know what I can do to you!" I screamed at the woman, trying my best to sound scary as she dragged my thrashing body behind her effortlessly. She was laughing. Really truly laughing. Scratch that- she was cackling. I felt my head knock against cement once, twice, three times, and gathered that we were heading upstairs into a very old (and I'm guessing not light-proof) building with a terrible smell and lots of mental chatter. I tried to focus on a few so I could see what I was dealing with. I wasn't dealing with other vampires, that's for sure, and I wasn't dealing with shifters. At least not for the most part. It certainly wasn't the Fellowship of the Sun either, so who was it?
I told Denise I was through with this late night shit. I'm going to have to sleep on the couch for a week.
She didn't look all that special to me!
God I hope I'm not pregnant. They'd fire me for sure if they knew whose it was.
Can you use a dead vampire as evidence? Evidence. So we're dealing with something official, right? I latched on to this brain and followed it as far as I could, and was still listening to its half-formed thoughts when I found myself in a bright room with a desk, a chair that I had been tied on to with the same silver chains, and two men dressed in suits. This hardly follows protocol, but he said get it no matter what it takes.
"Miss Stackhouse?" Said the shorter and huskier of the men, as the woman that had secured me to the chair left the room, throwing an evil smile behind her. I tried to latch on to her thoughts so I might have a better idea of what's coming, but for the first time since I registered her presence under the floorboards, I remembered that I hadn't once heard her mind. What was she? My hair was grabbed and my head thrown down on the desk in front of me by the taller of the men. "Miss Stackhouse, we're going to try to make this as painless as possible for everyone involved, so we'd sure appreciate it if you just made this easy for us and cooperate." Ordinarily I'd be seeing stars from the intensity of the head bashing, but I was thinking clear. I was thinking that if that guy brought his hand so close to my mouth again, he wouldn't live to see another minute.
"Would you like to tell me why I'm here first?" I asked, bitterly. I am soooo hungry. Just a little nibble would be really helpful right about now.
"I'm sure you've already figured that out by now Miss Stackhouse." The short one said again with a smirk. Dumbass. Got it. They're here about the telepathy. And this might just be the FBI. At least I hoped it was. Surely they knew better than to piss off the Sheriff of Area 5's whatever-I-was. Which brought a thought more painful than the silver that tied my hands to this chair. Where was he? Did they already have him?
"If you're here with the Nevada vampires, you're going to have to talk to Eric. I can't help you." I told them, matter-of-factly and doing my best to play dumb. I don't think it worked.
Tall head-basher laughed. "Oh trust me, we're not with the Nevada vampires. And we've already talked to Eric. He wasn't very helpful." Let's see how helpful he gets right before dawn. Okay. This was worse than I had imagined. Surely they didn't want a telepath so bad they'd start taking down vampires to get to me. But if I'm thinking correctly, these are the same guys who came up with waterboarding, so giving them that much was probably too much.
"Well why don't you tell me who you are with and what you want with me and then you can let Eric and myself free and maybe we won't come back and kill every single one of you?" I surprised myself with how bad-ass I sounded because I certainly didn't feel it.
Short guy started this time. "That won't be necessary Miss Stackhouse. We just brought you here for a little chat, that's all." The kind of chats I like don't start with hours of torture, but I listened anyway. There wasn't much of a point in ignoring him. His thoughts were drifting towards what I would smell like in the sunlight, so I preferred to listen to his spoken voice. "We have a favor to ask of you."
"You could have just asked. You didn't have to drag me down here in a silver net like some terrorist."
"We've been trying that, Miss Stackhouse. But your Mr. Northman has found ways of preventing this little chat." Okay. Now I'm listening. "So we took care of him. If you cooperate with us and do so quickly, we'll even put him inside before the sun comes up." These people were monsters with FBI badges. They might as well have been FOTS members. "That gives us just over three hours, Miss Stackhouse."
"Then why don't you get to the point?" I nearly spat the words out, I was so angry. Torturing me was one thing, but grabbing Eric first was something else entirely.
The tall one pulled up a chair in front of me and threw a plain black briefcase on the table before me. He punched a code into the lock on it and it swung open. He did have to think about it, and I pulled the numbers out of his head and saved it for later. From the briefcase he pulled out a giant folder with my name on it. His mind told me that it had everything from early psychologists' reports (when they told me my telepathy was just a 'learning disability') to my medical files from only a few weeks ago, my death certificate and a copy of my vampire registration card. He finally opened the folder and on top lay a curious envelope addressed to Eric in perfect cursive in a golden ink. "Would you like to explain this letter Miss Stackhouse?"
I was dumbfounded. Telepath, yes, psychic, no. "I'm not sure that I can. It's not mine." Tall one pulled the letter out of the envelope which he had obviously taken the liberty of opening. I felt like reminding him that it was a federal crime to open someone else's mail, but something tells me he already knew that. As he pulled it out of the envelope, the light on the desk revealed a perfect invitation; one that could have easily passed for a graduation open house had it not said "from the Vampire queen of England" right at the top.
"It's an invitation to a vampire conference in London, Miss Stackhouse." This was all news to me. Perhaps if they hadn't been going through my mailbox I would have known about this earlier. "And I'm going to be frank with you. We need someone in there. We need to know everything that is going on in that room."
"We'll you've got the invitation. You're already a few steps farther than me. Probably a couple steps farther than Eric, too!" I wiggled my wrists and winced as the silver dug in deeper. I could feel blood dripping down my wrists and hear it dropping onto the floor. During the second and a half it took me to close my eyes and gather myself, the woman with red lipstick and bleach-blonde hair that had kicked my vampire-ass had walked into the room and was leaning against the door frame, inspecting her fingernails. My pain subsided as my fascination peaked; I had no idea what she was. She was stronger than a human, didn't think like humans (or didn't think at all) and looked absolutely lethal. In two giant steps she had crossed the floor and jumped onto the desk and crouched in front of me. Making sure she had my full concentration, she smiled a very evil smile and with a few very sharp upper teeth, tore open her wrist and showed it to me. My instinct was to lean forward and drink from her to replace the blood she had drawn from me with silver chains, but it smelled all wrong. Half a second after the smell hit me, a thick, dark green liquid rose to the surface and dripped four drops on the table, and then healed itself faster than any vampire's wound could heal. The drops that had hit the table were starting to sizzle and within a few more seconds, had burned through the table entirely, filling the room with a variety of smells from burning wood to acid, and I threw my legs to the side quickly to avoid the drops falling through the table. They landed on the cement floor below me and kept sizzling, but grew quiet with time.
"What are you?" I asked, horrified more than interested. She smiled something sinister and cackled once again.
"This is Malia." The shorter one said, trying to sound official but was five different kinds of scared. "And you're going to do exactly what we tell you to do, and we might not set her on you."